LAS VEGAS–The president of PayPal said the company is seeking to expand its lending offerings, while also sharing a message that will sound familiar to many credit unions.
Enrique Lores, who has led PayPal for seven months after serving for five years on the company’s board, shared with the Money 20/20 Conference how the company is seeking to offer a broader financial services menu, similar to Chime and SoFI.
His comments came as part of a Q&A that was moderated by Karen Webster, president and CEO of PYMNTS.
Below is a look at some of what he said:
Webster: A roadmap suggests a destination and a series of mile markers. Where are we going?
Lores: We have a clear goal for the company, which is to make it more relevant in the financial lives or our customers, in the lives of merchants, and to be more attractive for investors. It is very clear we have very strong assets we are building from, with more than 400 million users of the app. We have incredible opportunities in terms of understanding their behaviors.
It’s also clear we need to make changes to be more relevant. We are expanding our business model from being used at point of payment at checkout to a wider variety of services. Venmo has not been getting enough attention. We also believe a key advantage is we are a dual-sided network and we are revitalizing what we are doing with consumers, understanding better what they do.
Two other changes: we need to simplify how we work and remove management layers. From a tech perspective, we need to embrace AI, including in terms of how we work, and we are modernizing our technology stack.
Webster: You have said you want to look more like SoFi and Chime. How will you get there?
Lores: We see an opportunity to expand our portfolio of services for customers. We understand very well our most-engaged customers, the ones who bring more value to the company. They want credit, such as BNPL and lending. We believe the capabilities we have today will allow us to expand. We are not abandoning checkout; it will remain very relevant, but we will complement it.
Webster: You reported about 60 transactions over 12 months for the typical PayPal user. For neobanks, it’s exponentially more and their business models look different. How do you move from five to 15 a month?
Lores: It’s about adding what people want. As we have added BNPL, we see people buy more and buy more frequently. This is good for the consumer, for merchants and for PayPal. This is going to be a gradual process, and we have the conviction this is going to be a successful plan for us.
Webster: I’ve been a PayPal user since 1999. But I find myself not using you as much as I used to and using others more How do you get me back as a user or am I not as important to you as I once was?
Lores: Every customer is important. What we are really focusing our attention on is those customers who use us more frequently. In the last few months, we have come to understand them very well. They care about trust and security, they care about flexibility and ability to purchase in variety of ways, and they care about maximizing the value of the transaction.
This is why loyalty programs are so important. It all starts from understanding these high-value customers and doubling down on the services they want from us and engaging with the merchants where they buy more frequently. More and more, flexibility is becoming more relevant.
